Fortnightly - hurricanehttp://www.fortnightly.com/tags/hurricane
enUtility System Hardeninghttp://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2014/08/utility-system-hardening
<div class="field field-name-field-import-deck field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Deck:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Taking Resiliency One Step Further</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-byline field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Byline:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Mike Hervey</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-bio field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Author Bio:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p class="p1"><strong>Mike Hervey</strong> is Director of Navigant’s Energy Practice, in the firm’s New York City office. Since joining Navigant in early 2013, he has performed end-to-end analyses of business processes, culture, work practices, and geographical differences across energy service companies. Before joining Navigant, Mr. Hervey was Chief Operating Officer and Acting CEO of the Long Island Power Authority.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-volume field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Magazine Volume:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Fortnightly Magazine - August 2014</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-image field-type-image field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1408-FEA3-fig1.jpg" width="1004" height="469" alt="Figure 1 - Hardening vs. Resilience vs. Restoration" title="Figure 1 - Hardening vs. Resilience vs. Restoration" /></div><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1408-FEA3-fig2.jpg" width="2048" height="873" alt="Figure 2 - Improving Performance: Before, During and After" title="Figure 2 - Improving Performance: Before, During and After" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Rising customer reliance on energy for daily needs. More dramatic weather patterns. A heightened sensitivity to the costs of extended utility outages. Regulatory pressures growing more intense. Each of these factors is driving utility asset owners increasingly to consider formalized programs for utility system hardening.</p>
<p>Recent events - including hurricanes, ice storms, derechos, and even fires - have shown that regulators and customers will no longer tolerate extended electric system outages. The political, regulatory, and customer outcries during, and after, each major prolonged outage incident are growing at an ever-increasing pace. Yet relatively little is actually being done to harden electric systems in most areas of North America.</p>
<p>Several states, including Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, and Kentucky, have forged the the way with prescribed regulatory requirements, many of which have existed for some time. However, the regulatory environment around utility system hardening remains cautious and inconsistent. When considering a system hardening program, utilities should ask a wide range of questions: Which programs will provide the best outcomes for the optimal spend? What should our hardening priorities be? And, what costs can be recovered in rates?</p>
<p>For their part, regulators also tend to have limited experience with system hardening measures. Consequently, they often focus on very narrow solutions - the overall result often being that the best solutions are not what regulators, utilities, or their customers might perceive them to be. Often, as these programs are considered, there is not enough focus on how to best accomplish specific goals or look at a broad enough range of opportunities to improve system performance.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the regulated programs that currently exist generally focus on a narrow range of potential types of damage and/or hazards that historically are seen only in very specific geographic areas. In recent years, however, there has been an effort to define problems and potential solutions more broadly, with much of the discussion focused on "resiliency." Resiliency is a helpful concept as far as it goes. It describes the efforts needed to improve a system's ability to bounce back after a major damaging event without over-promising that damage can be completely avoided or eliminated. The term "resiliency" also mirrors the vocabulary used by federal emergency management experts. "Resiliency", however, can be unhelpful for what it fails to do. While it focuses on bouncing back, essentially as a reaction to any single event, resiliency as a strategy can sometimes ignore or overlook opportunities to prevent damage and mitigate a storm's impact in the first place. That is why, from a program perspective, while resiliency may sound good for public consumption, the industry nevertheless should think in much broader terms.</p>
<p>Realistically, if asset owners and regulators want to address the issue of utility system hardening in a way that manages both expectations and costs, they must consider a wide range of hazards - including hurricanes, tidal and storm surges, fire, ice, tornados, earthquakes, floods, and man-made disasters -while simultaneously considering a very broad approach to reinforcing systems, components, processes, and procedures. Where system hardening requirements are not currently prescribed by regulation, a customized approach can be developed so that hardening programs can address both the various types of major events that can potentially occur and the types of damage that can result. And don't forget that system hardening is a relatively new concept. Most asset owners have little information that can be used as a basis for developing an effective program.</p>
<p><b>Rethinking Your Objectives </b></p>
<p>Because storm hardening addresses very specific yet infrequent major events, cost and benefits are very difficult to quantify. Storm hardening programs can rarely be justified using typical utility cost/benefit analysis methodologies.</p>
<p>For example, whether or not a storm hardening program actually decreases the number or duration of outages is difficult to predict, and even harder to verify since system reaction to every storm is different. Similarly, the time that passes between applying storm hardening measures and a major damaging event could be years. And even with hardening in place, Mother Nature is unpredictable, and can always cause damage that could not be predicted or practically addressed. The costs associated with storm hardening programs are great. Yet the benefits are not only difficult to quantify, and but often only incremental to what the result might have been for any specific event, without the hardening program. Therefore, system hardening is more often justified on policy goals that are directed towards protecting a company's physical assets and limiting exposure or risk from the customer's perspective. A comprehensive policy statement, then, should include discussion of the following objectives:</p>
<p>• Decrease the number of outages,</p>
<p>• Decrease restoration time,</p>
<p>• Limit the amount of damage to the system,</p>
<p>• Protect the most valuable and hard to replace assets (thus limiting cost exposure and operating risk), and</p>
<p>• Keep service on for critical infrastructure</p>
<p>This generic, five-part objective statement can be further focused with quantities, times, durations, and other specifics in order to adapt it to a particular utility's situation or regulatory environment. However, by its nature, the objective statement also acknowledges that outages cannot be reduced to zero in every circumstance, restorations do take time, some assets are so vital that they require special treatment, and utilities may need to know quite a bit more than they know today about the criticality of customers that are being served.</p>
<p>While the first two objectives may be obvious to most, the second two objectives are often overlooked by regulators and utilities, and require utilities to look beyond distribution assets. The process of protecting the most valuable and hard-to-replace assets leads directly to having specific assessments, risk evaluations, design improvements, and mitigation programs for some of the most expensive utility assets. Illustrative examples of assets in this category include substation equipment, underground transmission systems that have dielectric fluid, and overhead transmission spans that are difficult to reach because of their isolated location, complexities or coordination with other agencies such as railroads, or that require specialty equipment to repair such as long river crossings.</p>
<p>Keeping electric service on for critical infrastructure means that utilities must spend a significant amount of time with local emergency management agencies to assess, inventory, and understand customer criticality from an emergency management perspective. Significantly, these emergency management criteria are very often very different than most regulator-defined critical or medical customer lists. Customers that could be included on an emergency management critical list include water and sewer stations, government centers, cooling centers, evacuation centers, transportation hubs, schools, bridges and tunnels, commuter railroads, liquid fuel infrastructure, waste water pumping stations, and communications systems. Knowing the various risks for these types of customers, and the importance of each to emergency management professionals, can not only provide a framework for prioritizing system hardening and restoration, but can also push utilities beyond their normal approach to system design and restoration priorities. Additionally, having a well thought out and prepared plan developed in conjunction with the emergency management professionals can also provide support for regulatory relief from any additional costs associated with providing higher levels of service to these types of facilities.</p>
<p><b>A Concrete Approach</b></p>
<p>Given what is at stake as a result of the high costs, complexity, and potential impacts on customers, a broad-reaching but disciplined approach to analyzing system hardening programs and opportunities is required. And, because of geographic variations and differences in the design basis of utilities, a customized approach to determining the best hardening solutions for a particular utility in any particular situation is most often in order. This also means that the process of developing a program starts with each utility conducting a review of its specific situation relative to best practices and opportunities for improvement. This customization also means that, for example, even within a given utility, the risks and opportunities between coastal and inland or metropolitan and rural areas are evaluated differently. This type of customized approach reviews hardening opportunities under a three-part lens designed to probe whether or not system performance and service quality in response to severe storms can be improved.</p>
<p>While the current industry conversation focuses on resilience, don't ignore the durability and restoration aspects of a system hardening program. By focusing on durability - making changes in an coordinated and integrated fashion where damage can be avoided - the system becomes more flexible (resilience) and service is restored more quickly (restoration). This more comprehensive result will improve performance across a wider range of every day events than would occur in a program that would be more focused but only address sporadic major damage events.</p>
<p>In other words, by taking a broader approach to hardening for major events that also improves system performance for more frequent events, the program assures that benefits are observed not only more frequently, but are also more quantifiable, and over a shorter period of time. And, when benefits are more readily observed, the program can be fine-tuned or optimized over time with the resulting program being customized, well-structured and broad-based, with a strong basis for regulatory support. Utilizing this three-pronged approach also promotes the use of a full range of operational changes, process improvements, procedural updates, and other measures in addition to simply beefing up system design, thus creating pathways to optimize solutions.</p>
<p><b>Areas of Opportunity</b></p>
<p>Once a utility establishes policy objectives for its system hardening program, there are generally six broad areas of opportunity that are key to improving the system performance before, during, and after major damage events.</p>
<p>1. System Configuration.</p>
<p>2. Design/Construction Standards.</p>
<p>3. Materials.</p>
<p>4. Inspections.</p>
<p>5. Maintenance Practices.</p>
<p>6. Enabling Infrastructure.</p>
<p><b>System Configuration. </b>This area of opportunity<b> </b>Includes<b> </b>planning, configuring, and actively re-configuring the system, both in day-to-day operation and design, so that risk from loss of one or more components is minimized and there is a viable path to recovery in the event of one or more elements of the system failing. Top examples include the pervasive use of distribution automation, a high degree of operational awareness, robust command and control systems, and a real time risk assessment and management of the current configuration of the distribution system from the customer's perspective.</p>
<p><b>Design/Construction Standards. </b>These measures may<b> i</b>nclude higher wind- and ice-loading criteria, or sealing substation equipment from water and snow intrusion. Construction standards may require hardened assets in new construction, focused high-value enhancements to non-hardened assets, or construction standards that enhance assets and simplify their reparability. Design standards can include redundancy, operability, selective undergrounding, submersible underground equipment, engineered failure points on distribution lines, raising the height of substations or substation equipment, and moving the physical location of facilities to less vulnerable areas out of flood and surge zones.</p>
<p><b>Materials. </b>The hardening program may<b> </b>intentionally and selectively require using stronger and more durable materials that have a higher likelihood of survival in extreme conditions. Examples include substation insulator materials that can withstand direct strikes from wind-blown debris, steel pole construction, stainless steel transformer tanks in salt water areas, and improved gasket and weather-proofing materials for control cabinets.</p>
<p><b>Inspections. </b>System hardening<b> </b>includes<b> </b>performing appropriate inspections of potentially vulnerable assets to proactively identify them for replacement or repair with system hardening requirements in mind. Inspection activities include inspecting substation and control equipment for water tightness, improved pole inspection and replacement programs, and remote monitoring of equipment that is difficult to access.</p>
<p><b>Maintenance Practices. </b>Hardening may prescribe enhanced maintenance practices designed to reduce susceptibility to damage or aid in reconfiguration of the delivery system. Maintenance practices can include hazardous tree removal, removing over-hanging tree limbs, keeping underground and overhead looped systems fully operational, and exercising switching equipment.</p>
<p><b>Enabling Infrastructure. </b>The program also may include designing, preparing, and testing of infrastructure and systems critical to operational awareness and outage restoration for volume levels well above normal expectations, and for maintaining a very high availability that ensures continuity of service in the most extreme situations. This includes capabilities such as redundant command and control locations, remote monitoring, system control and data acquisition, Distribution Management Systems, radio communications, Information Technology Systems, customer call systems, and telecommunications.</p>
<p><b>Organizational Aspects </b></p>
<p>While the design, maintenance, condition, and configuration of the delivery assets are clearly key to improving system hardening, there are five organizational aspects to system hardening that must also be addressed:</p>
<p>1. Strategy and Philosophy.</p>
<p>2. Prioritization.</p>
<p>3. Coordinating Implementation.</p>
<p>4. Communication.</p>
<p>5. Community Involvement.</p>
<p><b>Strategy and Philosophy. </b>The program strategy and philosophy should define the sequencing of components of the program over a defined number years by company or regulatory objectives. It also should define the relationships that are expected with emergency managers and civil authorities, business plans for execution of the program, funding mechanisms, rate impact, and dealing with regulatory needs.</p>
<p><b>Prioritization. </b>This process should<b> </b>prioritize opportunities, especially between organizational silos. At a minimum, priorities should be reevaluated annually, based on the progress of the project, as well as the expected and observed results. Prioritization allows for otherwise disparate work to be compared (<i>e.g.</i>, pole replacement compared to IT system enhancement) to set program schedules and funding.</p>
<p><b>Coordinating Implementation. </b>Coordinating the timing of roll-out of the different phases of the program is essential, as well as sequencing the enhancement programs with other significant entities that share the same geography. Implementation horizons should be set primarily on the previously described strategy and philosophy, but should also be coordinated with emergency management professionals, other utilities such as water and communication companies, government agencies and transportation authorities, and modernization or hardening upgrade programs that critical customers may be planning for themselves.</p>
<p><b>Communication. </b>Communicating program details includes setting expectations with stakeholders. Clearly communicating program expectations, progress, and results to customers, employees, regulators, government agencies, and critical customers is vital and should be carried out through a defined and coordinated communication plan.</p>
<p><b>Community Involvement. </b>Gaining community acceptance includes being open to community input regarding system enhancements. Creating and maintaining strong relationships with emergency managers, local governments, government agencies, and communities is required in order to understand the point of view of these critical customers. Keeping these stakeholders informed about program progress and results, as well as managing their expectations on an ongoing basis, is critical to the success of any system hardening program.</p>
<p><b>Pulling the Program Together</b></p>
<p>Hardening a utility system is necessary and detailed work that touches nearly every aspect of utility operations. Beginning with the development and refinement of objectives, and leading to asset enhancement and organizational change, optimized hardening programs look beyond the programs that regulators have mandated and that most utilities have implemented.</p>
<p>System hardening also represents a significant set of changes in the underlying approach that utilities take regarding assets and organization. That means deploying processes to manage the changes, both internally and externally.</p>
<p>Finally, a well prepared program that incorporates all of the aforementioned concepts can provide an excellent basis for developing the regulatory support needed for significant investment to occur. For that to happen, the program should include an assessment of the current system assets and applicable business processes though use of a well thought out diagnostic tool. The system hardening program also should feature defined objectives, a detailed plan for implementation, funding, and execution, and lastly, continuous monitoring for effectiveness.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-category field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix"><h3 class="field-label">Category (Actual): </h3><ul class="links"><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-0"><a href="/article-categories/security-reliability-cip">Security, Reliability &amp; CIP</a></li><li class="taxonomy-term-reference-1"><a href="/article-categories/transmission">Transmission</a></li></ul></div><div class="field field-name-field-members-only field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Viewable to All?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-article-featured field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is Featured?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-image-picture field-type-image field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image Picture:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1408-FEA3.jpg" width="1125" height="750" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fortnightly-40 field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is Fortnightly 40?:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-law-lawyers field-type-list-boolean field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Is Law &amp; Lawyers:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above clearfix">
<div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div>
<div class="field-items">
<a href="/tags/resiliency">resiliency</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/weather">weather</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/outages">outages</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/hardening">hardening</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/hurricane">hurricane</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/florida">Florida</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/texas">Texas</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/oklahoma">Oklahoma</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/kentucky">Kentucky</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/system-hardening">System hardening</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/navigant">Navigant</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/outage">outage</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/restoration">restoration</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/damage">damage</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/asset">asset</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/infrastructure">Infrastructure</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/dielectric">dielectric</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/railroad">railroad</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/durability">durability</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/configuration">configuration</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/construction">construction</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/standard">standard</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/inspection">inspection</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/maintenance">maintenance</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/strategy">Strategy</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/prioritization">prioritization</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/implementation">implementation</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/communication">Communication</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/community">community</a> </div>
</div>
Sun, 03 Aug 2014 22:19:44 +0000meacott17651 at http://www.fortnightly.comModeling Storm Outageshttp://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2013/10/modeling-storm-outages
<div class="field field-name-field-import-deck field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Deck:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p class="p1">New tools for enhancing utility preparedness and response.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-byline field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Byline:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Michael Beck, Seth Guikema, Ken Buckstaff, and Steven Quiring</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-bio field-type-text-long field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Author Bio:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><b>Michael Beck</b> is the founder and managing director of MJ Beck Consulting, LLC. <b>Seth Guikema</b> is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, with joint appointments in civil engineering and Earth and planetary sciences. <b>Ken Buckstaff</b> is the managing director of First Quartile Consulting, where he leads the utility benchmarking and consulting practice. <b>Steven Quiring</b> is an associate professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&amp;M University, focusing on hydroclimatology, drought monitoring and prediction, and modeling the impact of hurricanes on infrastructure systems.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-volume field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Magazine Volume:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Fortnightly Magazine - October 2013</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-import-image field-type-image field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Image:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1310-FEA2-fig1.jpg" width="2062" height="1149" alt="Figure 1 - Expensive Weather Events " title="Figure 1 - Expensive Weather Events " /></div><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1310-FEA2-fig2.jpg" width="1026" height="1031" alt="Figure 2 - Billion-Dollar Hurricanes" title="Figure 2 - Billion-Dollar Hurricanes" /></div><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1310-FEA2-fig3.jpg" width="2060" height="981" alt="Figure 3 - Reliability Trends" title="Figure 3 - Reliability Trends" /></div><div class="field-item odd"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1310-FEA2-fig4.jpg" width="2058" height="683" alt="Figure 4 - Actual vs. Predicted Outages" title="Figure 4 - Actual vs. Predicted Outages" /></div><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.fortnightly.com/sites/default/files/1310-FEA2-fig5.jpg" width="1375" height="1864" alt="Figure 5 - Example Of Pre-Storm Predictions For Hurricane Sandy" title="Figure 5 - Example Of Pre-Storm Predictions For Hurricane Sandy" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Extreme weather events aren’t new. Utilities, first responders, and government agencies have extensive experience in dealing with weather-related disasters. Usually, the response is effective and, in many cases, might be characterized as heroic. But for a variety of reasons, including increasing population density (<i>i.e.,</i> affected customers), security concerns, ballooning damage assessments (<i>e.g.,</i> Hurricane Katrina’s impact was estimated at $146 billion<b><sup><a href="http://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2013/10/modeling-storm-outages?page=0%2C4#1" title="1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2012 dollars, inflation at CPI; http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events">1</a></sup></b>), extended outages, and an economy and society ever more dependent on its energy infrastructure, utilities find themselves under heightened scrutiny with regard to their activities related to storm preparation and response. For example, along with post-Sandy cleanup, executives and managers at many utilities have been engaged with post-Sandy investigations, hearings, regulatory proceedings, and media response. While some of this scrutiny, unfortunately, is a search for the guilty, not all of it is so opportunistic. There are lessons to be learned, practices to be changed, modified or adopted, and new tools to be employed. </p>
<p>Highly sophisticated storm outage modeling could be one of those tools. </p>
<p>Storm outage modeling – which might include estimating the number of customers out, protective devices activated, damages incurred, or restoration times – can be accomplished in a variety of ways, from the simple to the complex. The simple approach is based largely or solely on past experience and works well in many cases, but not all. And recent history has provided more than a few examples where there was no past experience to draw upon. </p>
<p>Research hasn’t shown conclusively whether storm frequency and intensity are increasing as a trend. But storm effects are leading many entities – utilities and agencies alike – to consider more sophisticated approaches to outage modeling. These approaches are based on significant advances in climatological research, enhanced GIS capabilities, specialized software, and low-cost computing power. </p>
<p>Sophisticated modeling doesn’t prevent storm damage – not in the short term anyway – but it can be an integral part of storm preparation and response. And with the preparation and response bar being continually raised, enhanced modeling approaches deserve a careful look. </p>
<h4>Storm Outages Rising</h4>
<p>Despite this year’s late-starting hurricane season, hurricane-related activity and intensity in the last few decades suggests a trend when compared to long-term historical data. The evidence, however, isn’t clear. Much of the dispute centers on the time period selected for study, anomalies in the data, and whether hurricane activity, or other storm types, refers to the total number of events or just particular categories of events (<i>e.g.,</i> hurricane categories 1 through 5). But regardless of whether there are more storms today than in the past, storms and climate-related events in recent years have been exceedingly damaging. In fact, as shown in Figure 1, 2012 produced 11 events in the U.S., each of which caused at least $1 billion in effects.</p>
<p>While the debate continues as to whether there’s an increasing trend in the annual number of storms, a review of long-term data indicates that there has been a demonstrable clustering of high-dollar (<i>i.e.,</i> greater than $1 billion) storms in the last decade or so. As shown in Figure 2, since 2000, there have been 22 Atlantic hurricanes that caused damages estimated at over $1 billion, compared with 23 Atlantic hurricanes over the 35 years from 1965 to 2000. In other words, storms are becoming more damaging in an economic sense, likely because of the increasing density of assets in many areas, and the increased value of the damaged assets.</p>
<p>The same trend is evident in electric utility reliability statistics. A survey of North American utilities shows that over a 10-year span (<i>see Figure 3</i>) the percentage difference between the frequency of outages (<i>i.e.,</i> SAIFI data) when major events are included and when they’re excluded in measurements has been slightly reduced. That is to say, utilities seem to be getting better at reducing the frequency of interruptions caused by major events. On the other hand, the difference in total outage time (<i>i.e.,</i> SAIDI) when major events are included has been slightly increasing. In other words, the contribution to total outage time by major events has been growing, despite the efforts by utilities to respond more effectively. In addition, it’s been reported that severe weather accounts for 58 percent of outages observed since 2002 and 87 percent of outages affecting 50,000 or more customers.<b><sup><a href="http://www.fortnightly.com/fortnightly/2013/10/modeling-storm-outages?page=0%2C4#2" title="2. Economic Benefits Of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience To Weather Outages, Executive Office of the President, August 2013.">2</a></sup></b> Not surprising information, maybe, but sobering.</p>
<p>Given the significant effects of storm events, particularly on the outage time experienced by customers, it’s evident that utilities need to find ways to enhance their ability to respond quickly and effectively. </p>
<h4>Modeling Storm Outages</h4>
<p> Utilities have responded to the need to prepare for increasingly damaging and potentially more frequent storms in various ways. Some, particularly in those areas that have experienced repeated impacts of hurricanes such as the Gulf Coast and southeast Atlantic Coast, have developed in-house outage and damage forecasting models. These models vary from simple correlation-based or spreadsheet models to more advanced predictive statistical models. These models can be run several days ahead to estimate how many outages, how much damage, or what duration can be expected from a forecast weather event. The models for hurricanes (as opposed to, say, thunderstorms or snow and ice storms) are most advanced, and a range of predictive models have been developed and implemented by a university research collaboration led by two of the authors (Guikema and Quiring), as well as at several major utilities. </p>
<p>An example of what a storm outage model looks like, how it works, and the output it produces, is demonstrated in the work of Guikema and Quiring and their research groups. The models were developed over about eight years in collaboration with a major utility that has experienced repeated hurricane impacts. The models use outage and damage data from past storms at a relatively high spatial resolution to train and validate a predictive model that can then be applied for future events. This is combined with wind forecasts, information about the power system, soil moisture levels prior to the storm, land use and land cover, topographic information, and utility tree trimming records. Early generations of these models (<i>Han et al. 2009a</i>) utilized relatively simple generalized linear regression models, but more recent models have used more flexible non-linear statistical methods and ensemble data mining techniques (<i>Guikema and Quiring, 2012; Nateghi et al. 2013</i>) to achieve more accurate results. </p>
<p>A critical distinction with tremendous practical effect in such models is the difference between model fit (to past data) and model predictive accuracy. Nearly any data set can be fit arbitrarily well with a sufficiently complex statistical model, but such a model wouldn’t yield accurate predictions; it would be over-fit to the data. Model validation, in the sense of testing how well the model predicts data that aren’t used in training the model, is critical for selecting a model with good predictive accuracy. The current standard for assessing model predictive accuracy is to use out-of-sample holdout testing, and this is the approach used in the authors’ work. A portion of the data is withheld from the data set; the model is trained on the remaining data set; the trained model is used to predict the outages for the withheld portion of the data; and the error is measured. This process is repeated for different holdout samples to test the conditions in which the model offers good predictive accuracy. The approach can withhold entire storms, portions of a service area, or randomly selected combinations of grid cell-storm combinations. The authors’ analysis uses all three approaches. </p>
<p>Once a model has been fully validated, it can then be used operationally. This generally involves running the model every six hours to update the hurricane track and intensity forecast starting approximately five days before landfall of the storm. The output from each model run consists of a map of predicted outage intensity and an estimate of the total number of outages, either for the full service area or for sub-areas of interest. These estimates then can be used in the utility decision-making process in the days before the storm, particularly in helping inform requests for external crews and materials. </p>
<p>As an example of the output of a prediction model, Figure 4 shows both the actual outages at the grid cell level (<i>i.e.,</i> in this case the “grid cell” is 12,000 by 8,000 feet) and the predicted number of outages with the predictions based on the best estimate of the actual hurricane track. These predictions thus eliminate the uncertainty in the track and intensity forecast, highlighting how well the model can do when given an accurate track and intensity forecast. The area shown is approximately one quarter of a sizeable state and contains approximately 2,000 grid cells.</p>
<p>Figure 5 illustrates an outage prediction made in advance of landfall of Hurricane Sandy. In this case, the predictions are from a simplified version of an outage forecasting model, a version that’s based only on publicly available data and therefore can be applied along the entire coastline. The map shows an area from just north of New York City south through New Jersey. The forecasts were made on Oct. 28, 2012, while Sandy was still off the coast of the Carolinas, and the estimates for this model were developed at the level of individual census tracts. Although Sandy ended up taking a somewhat more northerly track than was forecast when these estimates were made, the total number of people without power forecast at this point in time (approximately 10 million) was reasonably well aligned with the realized outages.</p>
<p>Ongoing research seeks to improve pre-storm outage forecasting models. Recent efforts have focused on better incorporating uncertainty in the weather forecasts into the models, to both improve predictive accuracy for predictions made four to five days before a storm, and to better capture and represent the uncertainty in the forecasts. Also, while this example focused on modeling the impacts of hurricanes, a similar approach could be used to develop models for other weather events such as thunderstorms, wind storms, and snow and ice storms. The major difficulty in modeling other types of weather events is in accurately forecasting the weather event with enough lead time to make an outage forecast useful to utilities. Progress is being made on outage forecasting for thunderstorms, and some preliminary work has been done on outage forecasting for ice and snow events.</p>
<h4>Putting Models to Work</h4>
<p>Storm modeling capabilities offer benefits for many types of users and stakeholders. First among these are utilities. There are potentially significant benefits to be derived for some utilities from enhanced pre-storm planning, during-event execution, and after-event assessment and reporting. In addition, long-term planning can be facilitated through scenario testing – developing and examining “what-if” scenarios. A storm model was used to address a recent request by the governor in a southern state who asked, “What would be the impact of a Katrina-sized storm rolling through the two largest cities in our state?” Another use of scenario planning would be to test different response approaches to potential storms. Using the same predicted storm damage, a model could be used to project response times under different scenarios of mutual aid levels, specific allocation strategies for resources, and levels of automation within the electric system. That might support investment decisions for the electric system as well as enhanced plans for resource planning and allocation in future storms.</p>
<p>Model development can also help utilities formalize the knowledge developed over the years by their storm response teams. That, in turn, would enable them to be better prepared when long-time storm management personnel retire or leave, as well as either confirming or rejecting long-held beliefs about likely event effects. The result is to institutionalize the knowledge of storm events, thus leaving the utility less dependent on the expertise of a very small number of individuals. </p>
<p>From the customer’s perspective, the two most important benefits are the potential for faster restoration times, and improvement in the utility’s ability to provide estimates of those restoration times. Storm modeling can enhance the utility’s ability to forecast outages, affected equipment, and damage to the electric system. The knowledge gained from the better predictions enables actions that, in turn, produce the desired benefits.</p>
<p>Mutual aid organizations might also benefit from a shared storm model. A region-based storm model could be utilized to share information on expected damage and customer outages, and collectively recognize where the greatest resource needs are likely to be during a major event, thereby optimizing the dispatch of resources across the entire storm area, with the resulting benefit to the greatest number of customers in a region. In the same way, emergency management agencies (EMAs) might also benefit from a storm model. Electric utilities clearly are focused on how a major event affects the electric system, while EMAs have a broader set of concerns, including multiple utility types (<i>e.g.,</i> electric, gas, water, telecommunications, etc.), as well as the effects on transportation, food and water supplies, and traffic management. A model to address multiple elements of infrastructure could help the EMAs be better prepared and more responsive in a major event, including helping to understand the interactions of the effects on different infrastructure elements.</p>
<p>Finally, in the aftermath of a major storm, a storm model could be used in analysis of a utility’s performance, to help improve future performance, and to support what have become customary investigations by regulators into the performance of utilities. Just as a regulator could use a model as a standard for comparison, the utility can use the model to demonstrate its successes in the response effort. It also can highlight unique circumstances that previously haven’t been encountered by the utility (<i>e.g.,</i> the flooding that occurred along the Northeast coast during Sandy) and demonstrate its effect on a utility’s ability to restore service.</p>
<p>Utilities and other stakeholders face increasing pressure to advance and enhance their storm preparation and response capabilities. These capabilities extend across a wide range of activities and include functions such as logistics, communications, infrastructure hardening, organization, and planning. Sophisticated storm modeling can enhance many of these areas and, as research advances, there are clear benefits to adopting new tools that will augment decision making during critical climate events.</p>
<h4><strong>Endnotes:</strong></h4>
<p><a name="1" id="1"></a>1. <span style="line-height: 1.538em;">National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2012 dollars, </span><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">inflation at CPI; <a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events">http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/events</a></span></p>
<p><a name="2" id="2"></a>2. <i>Economic Benefits Of Increasing Electric Grid Resilience To Weather Outages</i>, Executive Office of the President, August 2013.</p>
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<a href="/tags/katrina">Katrina</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/preparation">preparation</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/response">response</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/superstorm-sandy">Superstorm Sandy</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/outage-modeling">outage modeling</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/gis">GIS</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/mj-beck-consulting">MJ Beck Consulting</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/johns-hopkins-university">Johns Hopkins University</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/first-quartile-consulting">First Quartile Consulting</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/texas-am">Texas A&amp;M</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/hydroclimatology">hydroclimatology</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/hurricane">hurricane</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/saifi">SAIFI</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/saidi">SAIDI</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/outage-time">outage time</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/damage-forecasting">damage forecasting</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/model">model</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/predictive">predictive</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/validation">validation</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/grid-cell">grid cell</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/outage-forecasting">outage forecasting</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/emergency">emergency</a><span class="pur_comma">, </span><a href="/tags/ema">EMA</a> </div>
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Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:47:55 +0000meacott16820 at http://www.fortnightly.com